What I'm Here For
by tenofswords
Summary: Post 'Weeping Willows'. Greg confronts Grissom about his recent behaviour towards Catherine. Not for Grissom lovers. Greg slightly OOC.


**What I'm Here For**by tenofswords

Disclaimer – If I owned CSI, it would probably suck, so be grateful that Jerry Bruckheimer does. Spoilers for 'Weeping Willows' and 'Committed'. Notes – This probably isn't very good, cause it's more of a release than creativity. I saw the end of 'Weeping Willows', and felt like thumping Grissom for being so callous and nasty. This is the alternative. Enjoy (or try to)! 

"Hey, Grissom. Can I talk to you a sec?"

"Not now, Greg."

Grissom was walking down the crime lab corridor, the one that EVERYONE seemed to use for walking and talking nowadays. Idly, the grave shift supervisor wondered what happened to the concept of standing still, or better yet, sitting down, whilst talking.

Greg, meanwhile, having heard that last remark of Grissom's was just about ready to blow. _Man, if I have to hear someone say' Not now Greg' one more time, I'm gonna flip out completely..._ he thought furiously.

He didn't flip out, or blow, or any other random cliché for losing his temper. Instead, he walked around Grissom until he was right in front of him and said: "Well, the last time you didn't listen to a colleague who wanted to talk to you, it didn't turn out too well, did it? So, I think **yes **now!"

Grissom stopped dead in his tracks. He was stunned. Greg had only spoken to him like this once before, when Mia had first come to the crime lab, and Grissom had doubted her working ability. Grissom opened his mouth to order Greg back to work...

And promptly closed it. Greg was smiling, but there was nothing friendly about that smile, and the look in his eyes brooked no argument. He and Greg were going to talk, like it or not.

He observed, not without irritation, that a number of VERY interested lab techs, including the intolerable David Hodges, had poked their heads out of the various nearby labs to listen to what was becoming a very embarrassing conversation.

Grissom turned to the nearest tech, the one he'd meant to talk to in the first place before Greg had accosted him. "Would you please take a look at this for me Archie? I'll be back in a moment."

Archie took the tape with considerable trepidation. Grissom had spoken in that lethally calm tone of voice, and with that careful politeness that indicated that he was REALLY pissed! And his face had tightened up, his mouth shrinking to a thin, lipless line, eyes narrowed ominously. That often meant that someone was gonna die.

He would **not** like to be Greg right now...

Greg led Grissom into the most discreet part of the lab, the observation room behind the two-way mirror in the interrogation room.

"Okay, Greg. Now what is so urgent that it couldn't wait?"

Greg moved past him to the mirror and looked through it for a moment. "I need to talk to you. Bear in mind that in this room we are not CSI level one and Night shift supervisor; we are just Gil Grissom and Greg Sanders, and we talk as friends, not as co-workers."

Greg moved to the door. "In other words, you stand there," he pointed to where Grissom was standing, "I shut this," he shut the door, "make sure no-one is eavesdropping," he crossed to the security camera and yanked out the wires, "and then I tell you," he turned, at last, to face Grissom, "what an asshole you're being."

Greg said all of this in a steady, even flow, not raising or lowering the tone of his voice, while Grissom grew more stunned and outraged by the second. When he finally managed to speak, every syllable dripped with menace.

"Okay, Greg. You do all of that, and then afterwards, I'll decide whether I should suspend you, or simply demote you back to lab tech for a few weeks. How does that sound?" Grissom was, in fact, seriously considering making Greg into Hodges' assistant.

Greg balked at the thought of becoming a lab tech again, particularly now, with the crisis in DNA. If Grissom put him back there, Mia would NOT appreciate it. She wanted to handle this on her own; to prove that she really could do this job...

Greg shook this train of thought aside and continued. He needed to see this through, no matter what the consequences. "I said friends, Grissom, not co-workers, and _definitely_ not boss and subordinate. Specifically, I wanted to talk to you about the ladies of the lab."

Grissom decided to hear him out. Then punch him out. "What about them? This better not be about you and Sara..."

Greg's eyes flared, and Grissom suddenly thought it prudent to shut right the hell up, particularly as Greg wasn't wearing a smile anymore, icy or otherwise. "Actually, this is about **you** and **Catherine.** More accurately, about the way you've been treating her recently.

"I heard about what happened in the Adam Novak case, and I don't understand why you're acting as though Catherine committed a mortal sin. All she did was go out to a bar after a long, hard day at the end of a long, hard week, and look for a guy. The urge does grab us every now and then, you know?"

Grissom spoke up. "She acted intimately with a murder suspect, and endangered the case. Last time I checked, that wasn't laudable."

Greg looked exasperated. "Grissom, the guy wasn't a murder suspect when she flirted with him. How could she have known that would happen?"

"She should have let me know about it..."

Greg almost laughed out loud. "She **tried!** You didn't listen, and then you blame her for not telling you? And besides, even if she had told you, all she had at that point was a hunch, and we all know your view on hunches. You'd have told her to 'concentrate on the evidence' and then dismissed it."

Grissom was about to argue, and then he stopped. Would he have ignored it after all? After a moment of thought, he realised that he couldn't really deny Greg's point. He _did_ rely heavily on evidence. Knowing that Greg had him there, he silently conceded the point.

Greg sensing this small victory, continued. "What else could she have done besides what she did?"

But Grissom wasn't finished. "She should have been more careful. The guy hit her, then came to her house."

Greg sighed tiredly. "Okay, so her jerk alarm wasn't working too well that night! I'd even go so far as to say that she makes bad choices about men, that she always goes for dumb-ass, flash-dick, bling-bling asswipes that are all talk and no walk. But you know what? _At least she tried! _I mean, isn't there a Shakespeare quote somewhere that says 'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.'"

Grissom smirked. "Very good, Greg, but there's no quote that says 'Tis better to have gone to a seedy bar and struck out than never to have gone out at all!'" he retorted sarcastically.

Greg looked at Grissom as if he was a new alien species. "Are we on the same frequency here? I wasn't talking about Adam Novak. I was talking about Eddie Willows."

Grissom scoffed. "Eddie! Oh, yeah, he should have been sainted. A drugged-up, irresponsible loser who couldn't hold a job if he had a forklift truck, and who cheated on Cath with some junkie stripper. If that was love, then Will was wrong. Better to have never tried."

Greg seemed to slump, and for a moment he looked so hideously old and tired that Gil was scared. "Grissom, haven't you worked it out yet? All those years she spent with Eddie weren't out of self-loathing or desperation. For a while, they really were happy together. I, I...for God's sake Grissom, you were there when Lindsey was born!"

Greg needed to say no more. Grissom remembered perfectly what it had been like. Catherine, a then loving Eddie by her side, her best friend standing next to her, holding the centre of the universe in her hands. She had been the living definition of perfect happiness. And, Grissom suddenly realised, _so had Eddie!_

Back then Eddie hadn't minded Grissom's presence, had, in fact, been pleased to see him. They were almost friends. And he had been a loving husband, and a wonderful father.

Then the drugs came. The white demon of Cocaine had come to Eddie like a violent storm, ruining his life, and his marriage to the woman he had once genuinely loved.

Not anymore.

Grissom slowly drifted back to what Greg was saying. "...honestly say that it would have been better if it had never happened?"

Grissom tried to imagine a world without Lindsey and couldn't. He didn't think Greg could either.

But Greg was still talking. "What I'm saying, Gris, is that despite the fact that Eddie wasn't strong enough, in the end, to choose his family over drugs, despite the pain of his betrayal, despite everything, Catherine wouldn't take it back if she could, because of the happy years that they did share as husband and wife, and most of all because of her daughter. And despite that pain, and the pain of some of her other break-ups and bad choices, she'll keep trying until she finds someone who deserves her. To me, that's real strength, real toughness, real tenacity. Not giving up, ever!"

Grissom was more moved by this than he cared to admit. He had forgotten why he'd been angry with Cath in the first place.

Then he remembered. Or rather, he admitted why. He was more than a little disgusted with himself for the reason. He was angry with Catherine because he was jealous. Pure and simple.

It would have made a spectacular joke if it wasn't so sick. The great, impartial Dr. Gilbert Grissom, jealous of a phenomenal woman who refused to give up. He felt wretched to his soul.

He knew what he had to do now. Go to Catherine and make it right. Standing to go, he turned to Greg. "Thanks."

Greg smiled happily, the aura of age and weariness that had hung about him gone like a ghost. "Hey, it's what I'm here for."

Grissom turned and left, determined to make amends.

Greg stayed in the room for a long time. Something was not right. It felt like he had missed something. Should he have asked about Sara and what had happened at the Desert State Mental Institute? Should he have said something about Nick and Warrick? Or about Jim Brass and his daughter Ellie? Greg didn't know, and it worried him deeply.

Grissom may not have had any instincts besides the ones telling him where to look on a case, and Catherine's instincts might have been acting up and letting her down in the men department, but Greg's were working fine, and they were going crazy.

He felt like this was the calm before the storm. Something big was headed their way.

Something grave, and dangerous...

TBC? 


End file.
